09 the gunpowder plot preview

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 1

Herbert Thurston SJ 1929

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE

14/09/2017 15:11

Herbert Thurston (1856-1939) wrote a dozen books and almost eight hundred pamphlets and articles.

CTS ONEFIFTIES Originally published 1929.

Published by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road, London SE11 5AY www.ctsbooks.org All rights reserved.

Copyright Š 2017 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society.

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 2

ISBN 978 1 78469 535 4

14/09/2017 15:11

Thirteen turbulent men alone were engaged in the conspiracy –it is a mere calumny to charge their guilt upon their fellow Catholics at home or abroad.

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 3

14/09/2017 15:11

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 4

14/09/2017 15:11

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 1 HERBERT THURSTON, S.J.

It is frequently asserted by certain writers that the Gunpowder Plot was the work of Catholics as a body, and was approved and countenanced by the heads of their Church, and by Catholic princes abroad.

This is quite untrue, and there is no excuse for such a statement. Whatever the plot really was, only a small handful of Catholics, thirteen in all, were found to have been concerned in it.

The rest of the Catholic body not only took no part in their designs, but manifested the greatest indignation against them. As Professor Gardiner tells us (History, i. 264), “Their Catholic brethren spurned them from their houses”; and, as Mr. Jardine adds, “Even their own relations assailed them with threats and reproaches” (Criminal Trials, ii. 82). In the most recent English encyclopaedia This account has incorporated some portions of a previous pamphlet on the same subject by the late Father John Gerard, S.J.

1

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 5

5

14/09/2017 15:11

(Chambers, 1924) we read: “It is clear that the clergy in general, whether secular or regular, and the entire Catholic community, with the exception of a score of fanatics, were innocent of all participation in the plot.”

That no foreign prince was engaged is proved by the emphatic testimony of the Government itself, expressed on many occasions—e.g., by Sir Edward have had to take an oath of secrecy in solemn form.1 There is no sufficient reason to doubt the general accuracy of the Government account of the plot, so far as regards the incidents which occurred and their sequence. The leading conspirators had nearly all been concerned in earlier projects which aimed at placing the rule of the country in hands more friendly to the old religion than those of England’s ministers. Robert Catesby, the ringleader, as well as Thomas Winter, John Wright, Francis Tresham, Thomas Percy, and, be it noted, Lord Monteagle, had been implicated in the crazy schemes of reform for which the Earl of Essex on the 25th February, 1601, had paid the forfeit with his life. In 1602 Winter had gone to Spain to solicit foreign support for his fellow Catholics, in view 1

See J. H. Pollen in The Month, May, 1888, p. 67, note 18.

6

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 6

14/09/2017 15:11

of the crisis which was deemed likely to occur as soon as the Queen died. This appeal had met with no material response, though Sir Edward Coke declared at the trial of the conspirators that Winter returned laden with hopes and with the promise of the Spanish King to send an army into Milford Haven and to contribute to the enterprise 100,000 crowns. Meanwhile Percy had been employed in a particular mission to Scotland, and there is good reason to believe that he did obtain from King James a promise of toleration for Catholics in the event of his succeeding to the English throne.

No disturbance took place when, on Elizabeth’s death, James made his way to London. So cordial was the attitude of his new subjects that he laid aside all his misgivings. “Na, na,” he was heard to say, “we’ll not need the Papists noo.” In point of fact, after the collapse of Watson’s Plot, which was revealed by the Catholics themselves, the recusancy fines and other penalties were remitted for a short period. But the Puritan faction were ill-pleased at this remissness. Money was needed, for the King’s Scottish followers were rapacious, while the Pope was seemingly unwilling to gratify James in coercing English Catholics suspected of disloyalty. Accordingly, on the 22nd February,

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 7

7

14/09/2017 15:11

1604, a proclamation was issued providing for the banishment of Catholic priests, which was followed in July by an Act of Parliament confirming all the Elizabethan statutes against recusants, and towards the end of the same year measures were taken in earnest to exact from wealthy Papists the payment of the old ruinous fines. In the interval, the hotheads of the party, seeing that James’s promises of toleration could not be trusted, hatched the plot which was to be so famous in history. As early as March, 1604, Catesby seems to have conceived the main idea of using gunpowder to destroy the whole executive of the country at one blow, and then to have imparted his scheme to Percy and Thomas Winter. Winter raised some objections, and it was possibly in the hope of finding a less desperate solution of the difficulty that he went over to Flanders in April and tried to secure for the benefit of English Catholics the intervention of the Constable of Castile. In that quarter, however, he obtained nothing but vague promises, so that, reverting to Catesby’s scheme of violence, he imparted some inkling of the design to a resolute Yorkshireman, one Guy Fawkes, who had taken service with the Spanish army in the Netherlands. Fawkes returned with 8

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 8

14/09/2017 15:11

him to England, and in May, 1604, the five first conspirators, Catesby, Thomas Winter, Percy, John Wright, and Fawkes, met at a house behind St. Clement’s Inn and took an oath of secrecy.

Mass was then said in an adjoining room, at which they communicated together, but the priest— erroneously believed by some of them to be the Father John Gerard who, a few years before, had escaped from the Tower—knew nothing of their secret. In fact, as already mentioned, Catesby was urgent that nothing should be said to the priests, even in confession. On May 24th an agreement was signed for the lease of part of Whynniard’s block of buildings, abutting on the Parliament House, but a Government Committee claimed the right of sitting there, and the further proceedings of the conspirators in that direction had to be postponed.

In the meantime, however, they busied themselves about accumulating a store of powder, and shortly before Midsummer, 1604, Robert Keyes was sworn in to take charge of the house in Lambeth where they collected it. When the Parliament was prorogued on July 7th, it was understood that the next session would open in the following February.

The conspirators consequently set to work with

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 9

9

14/09/2017 15:11

a will as soon as they obtained unimpeded use of their Westminster lodging. Their design was to drive a mine under the Parliament House, and for this they found it necessary to enrol one or two new recruits. Catesby’s servant, Bates, who was thought to suspect something of their design, was for precaution’s sake required to take the oath, but he never worked at the mine. John Grant, Christopher Wright, and Robert Winter, the two latter being brothers of the conspirators already named, were only admitted in January.

The plotters seem to have taken precautions not to be seen going in and out of their tenement.

They laid in provisions as for a siege, and went on stealthily digging and tunnelling, while the only one who showed himself in public was Fawkes, a man little known in London. Moreover, to avert suspicion, Fawkes now called himself Johnson, and pretended to be the servant of Percy, in whose name the house had been hired. Percy, a connection of the Earl of Northumberland, for whom he acted as confidential steward, had some sort of official connection with Westminster.

The mining operations proved much more difficult than was anticipated, the walls of the Parliament House being as much as 9 feet thick.

10

b. 09 The Gunpowder Plot.indd 10

14/09/2017 15:11